“I think come March we’ll be stronger than we were here and we’ll be ready for the play-offs”
Michael O’Neill(Image: ©INPHO/William Cherry)
Michael O’Neill could not hide his frustration after Northern Ireland’s controversial late 1-0 defeat to Slovakia ended their hopes of a top-two finish in World Cup qualifying Group A, but amid the disappointment, he has seen his young squad take another stride forward.
O’Neill was left upset that Tomas Bobcek’s stoppage-time goal stood as Northern Ireland claimed a foul in the build-up on Daniel Ballard, later sent off for a second booking, left to wonder if referee Istvan Kovacs simply did not want to disallow a third Slovakian goal, having already chalked off two.
But although there was the bitter taste of a defeat in Kosice which leaves nothing to play for in Monday’s final Group A fixture against Luxembourg, the night also saw Northern Ireland secure a play-off place via the Nations League thanks to Croatia’s win over the Faroe Islands.
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When that was first mentioned to him after Friday’s defeat, O’Neill saw it as scant consolation. But a campaign in which Northern Ireland have beaten Slovakia at home and given Germany a good game home and away has suggested they will not be pushovers come March.
“We were probably going to end up (in the play-offs) anyway,” O’Neill said. “What we wanted to do was prove that we could come here and get what we needed. We wanted to finish in second place in the group. We won’t be able to do that now. That’s our disappointment more than anything else.”
But asked if he could take encouragement, O’Neill added: “If you look at our team we’ve got kids playing. We’re a very young team in certain areas and we’ve played a game here with obviously important players missing for us. So I think we’ve done extremely well.
“I think come March we’ll be stronger than we were here and we’ll be ready for the play-offs. I’ve no doubts about that.
“We’ll learn from these experiences. This is a tough place to come. They’re a very experienced team. They’ve got some very, very good players and they were at their strongest, so we had to deal with that and I thought there wasn’t a lot in the game.”
Northern Ireland travelled to Slovakia without four players who started their last qualifier at home to Germany, with Shea Charles, Ali McCann and Brodie Spencer injured and Ethan Galbraith suspended, while goalkeeper Pierce Charles remains out.
Ballard and George Saville will now miss Monday’s game through suspension.
“We’ve learned in this campaign you can lose a player at a moment’s notice, and we can’t control that,” O’Neill added. “Come March we want to be as strong as we possibly can be, but we wanted that when we played Germany in Cologne (in September), and we had to do that without Daniel Ballard.
“You’re never in control of that. But hopefully come March, the challenges we’ve had through this group with the players missing, we’ll not have those and we’ll be as strong as we can be.”